The Boy and his Lonely House
by iandyourghost
Summary: Let me tell you a story. Gokudera and his life. 5827


Its loonnngg. really really loonng. GAH! my spanish hw died cuz of this. Gah. Reborn is not-mine. Nope. My mini-fairytale thing is! :D

* * *

_Wherever you go, go with all your heart._

~Confucius

-

-

-

-

_(Once upon a time there was a boy.)_

When Gokudero was four, his father plopped him down in a piano bench. "Your mother plays this," he said, eyes stern. "You will learn, too."

And, for once, his father had eyes only for him, if only for those fleeting hours Gokudero practiced; In those fleeting hours (minutes), his father was his, so Gokudero practiced.

He practiced until his hands formed callouses, until his eyes stung, and sometimes he forgot about classes, or lunch.

There was a certain peace in gliding scales, the sharpness of a staccato, minuets and sonatas and fugues and sinfonias.

* * *

Gokudero had always known her mother was sick, was weak.

Nothing prepared him for his death, though, the death of his kind, sweet, distant mother.

Her last words were: "Keep playing the piano, sweetie."

Gokudero is furious. There was no "I love you", no "I'll miss you", nothing but the stupid piano.

He returned home, and ripped up all his books. All his years of practice, of care, Mozart and Beethoven and Debussy, and love, amounted to nothing but a pile of papers scattered all across the floor.

He will never touch a piano again.

_(He had his heart broken a long, long time ago.)_

When Gokudero was nine, his big sister leaves for school.

Just up and disappears, leaving nothing but a note on his door, and a bento filled with poisoned cookies.

Gokudero considers throwing them away, but instead keeps them on the shelf next to his study books.

(Like hell, he was eating them.)

* * *

His father leaves when he is ten, and he is all alone in a too big house with nothing but maids and caregivers that resented him and the rattling sound of wind that moaned through the house in the winter.

He wonders how many more precious people will leave, and decides he will leave them first.

So he trains. He trains and he fights and he learns and he studies with all the intensity that made him a prodigy at the piano.

He trains and blocks himself off, ignoring the cracking of his drying up heart.

_(The boy was a prince who lived by himself in a house in the middle of a forest that no one ever visited.)_

At ten, he dismisses his private tutors, and demands entry into a private school.

On the first day, he picks a fight with a gang three years older than him.

He breaks the leader's nose.

At ten and a half, he leaves that private school, and promptly enrolls in another one.

It wasn't as if he wasn't _competent. _He was a genius. He just didn't like staying in one place too long.

(Staying meant putting down roots.)

_(The boy was horribly lonely.)_

Gokudero is thirteen when a call comes from his father.

Three and a half fucking years too _late_, he says, but acquises to his father's request anyone.

Gokudero Hayato is headed to Japan.

_(One day, a traveller stumbles upon the boy's house.)_

The first time Gokudero met Tsuna, he instantly dislikes him. And then tries to kill him. Tsunayoshi Sawada, he learned, was the prestigous next-in-line for Vongola, a revered and sought after position. And Tsuna was completely and utterly _ordinary_. Brown hair, brown eyes, homecooked meals and a stutter and bad grades.

(Gokudero can't admit he is _jealous._)

_("Go away," said the boy, "this is my house, and I live here alone. Go away.")_

Of course, his opinions take a jarring one-eighty, when Tsuna saves him the first time they ever meet.

_Completely stupid_, saving the enemy. But Tsuna did, risking his life with no backwords thought (for _him_, the bastard son of the mafia), and the first thing he said was "Are you okay?"

Gokudero had not heard those words in a long time.

Tsuna, he discovers, is kind. Kind and honest, and so full of _heart _that it spills out of him onto everyone around him.

_("But," said the traveller, "aren't you lonely all by yourself?")_

Gokudero decides to stay by Tsuna's side. Not because he _wants_ to, because his father told him to.

(Because he sleeps better around Tsuna, because his aching heart had been keeping him awake at night.)

_(And then the traveller said, "I am lost, but if you help me out of the woods, I will take you to my home and cook you a great feast in thanks.")_

_("Why," asks the boy, "would I want to eat your cooking?")_

_("Because," said the traveller, "everyone likes to eat with other people.")_

_(Reluctantly, the boy agrees, and leaves his lofty house within the forest, to visit the traveller's home. The traveller's home was small, but warm, and his food was delicious.)_

_(And the boy never turned back.)_

-

-

-

-

Gokudero loves Tsuna because Tsuna was his first.

His first friend, his first love, the first sip of water after years of years of brutal thirst.


End file.
